Hugh's Keyspan Drivers Page

Background

With assistance from Keyspan, I'm working on drivers for their range of USB to serial converters. Models that are supported are the USA-49W, USA-28X, USA-19, USA-18X and USA19W with more to come as they are released. The USA-28 is not supported at present but requires only minor changes to do so.

Discussions are also underway to do a driver for their neat little IR remote control unit. My intention is that this driver would integrate with LIRC.

Thanks to Keyspan for having the foresight to support Linux and for being a pleasure to work with.

Status

The devices mentioned are now supported on 2.4.0-test11 and 2.2.18 and later
kernels. Thanks to Paulus for his help in getting things finalised.

Code

The driver is now integrated into the mainstream kernels. If there are updates they will appear here but at present the kernel is completely up to date.ftp http

History

Any day to day updates will now appear in my diary as it was becoming a bit daft maintaining two quite similar documents.

18-7-2000

Basic character input/output works on the USA-19 but fixed at 9600 baud, close() doesn't work correctly and your machine may catch fire if you use it. Apart from that it's OK.

17-7-2000

Got characters going in and out now at 9600 baud, gotta do some state machine logic to ensure close() is handled correctly (ie data gets sent before close completes) Changing baud rates is next on the agenda after that.

11-7-2000

First patch went into 2.4.0-test3 just now thanks to Greg. This provides firmware upload support only. I'm working on getting some characters out after a couple of wrong turns...

5-7-2000

Finally got a chance to do some hacking on the drivers, now uploads correct firmware for each device and does a renumeration. Plan to work on actually getting some characters out tomorrow!

Keyspan sent over updated firmware a week or so back which has made the ID/renumeration process a bit cleaner. Tested with the four units I have, the logfile only shows three but you get the idea.

12-4-2000

Met with the guys from Keyspan this morning, was a very positive meeting and they're really nice folks. Went over some interesting technical issues and they gave an informal roadmap of where they see their driver/firmware heading. The latter was particuarly good as it will allow me to code the driver with these future changes and enhancements in mind. If only all manufacturers were this positive about Linux!

10-4-2000

Was able to upload firmware into the 28x from the Linux driver :).

7-4-2000

Got firmware image for the USA-28x from Keyspan along with some header files describing the message formats etc. Neato.

24-3-2000

Got some of the documentation today, will read it further over the weekend but my initial take is that it's going to be a nice protocol to work with.

21-3-2000

Followup discussion with the gentleman at Keyspan this morning, should get the documentation for
the command set later this week via email. There are two different command sets used it seems, one one being for the USA-28 and USA-19, the other for the USA-19W, 28X and 18X.

17-3-2000

Got a parcel from Keyspan today with sample adaptors and a MOU to sign and return.
All looks very promising!